Should have gone to

[Red Adder]

[quote="madmike"]I'm in IanD's gang on this one - [/quote]

Me too, even if there is sometimes a danger of overdiluting the sport.

[awk]

a building is a building
a wall is a wall
a street is a street

unless of course if you mean....

No I don't - I mean that the same art and skill is required, but in a different environment/context (and a hill is a hill, a re'entrant is a re-entrant, a knoll is a knoll)

From your regular negative commentary on urban orienteering, you obviously don't find it satisfies your needs from the sport. Fine, I can understand that, as personally, after some 40+ years competing in terrain, I have been finding the same with 'standard' orienteering. I find urban orienteering makes a refreshing change which, when it is planned well and on good quality terrain, has provided new, and often even greater and more interesting, technical challenges than much of the terrain based orienteering available in this country, not least because of the greater speeds possible in urban, and the fact that planners and organisers are still exploring the extent to which they can take the sport. Fortunately there are events, like the Tim Watkins, which appear to be doing the same in terrain, but on the other hand my most disappointing experiences of the past couple of years have all been in terrain, even at supposedly high quality events.

As for issues over maps, planning, interpretation etc., they are just as prevalent in 'terrain' orienteering: there are plenty of examples of courses being voided or subject to all sorts of technical debates at every level right up to international.

So, I'm another in the 'let's hear it for the variety' camp.

[Copepod]

I spent an hour this morning showing O maps to a geographer who works in the conservation section of a university zoology dept. We'd met a few weeks earlier when she spoken about land use mapping to a city natural history society, and afterwards, i'd mentioned the hidden resource of orienteering maps - she was keen to see example,s hence this morning's meeting. Obviously, my selection is biased to where I've orienteered (WAOC / East Anglia / NE England / plus a few from West Mids and Mid Wales) / marshalled adventure races (London, Snowdonia, Lakes, Yorkshire Dales & Moors etc), but a good start.

So, if anyone sees a young woman new to orienteering and new to Staffordshire at an event after Jan 2012, please be welcoming - hope you would anyway